Just got back from Hampton’s 2019 town meeting where Karen and I voted on everything going on in our government from the budget, to filling the town clerk position, to changes in zoning law, to whether someone needs to run over to Staples and pick up a box or two of paper clips. Well maybe not the last thing.
At the polling station they had available copies of Hampton’s 380th annual report. Between the two beautiful glossy covers are 314 pages of everything you could possibly want to know about what the municipality has been up to for the past twelve months.
I know these must be expensive to print but I feel any money spent forwarding the goal of transparency is money well spent. Actually a few years ago I wrote a column suggesting Belmar do exactly this. (The idea came to me from looking at the annual reports to shareholders from companies I have some stock in.) I know Belmar doesn’t have a lot of extra money to spend, but doing something similar and mailing them out to every resident and taxpayer might be a way to connect with the folks and help bring them along on some of the painful choices Belmar is going to have to make in the coming years.
Online version is here if you care to look at it.
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The Achilles Heel of democracy is [that once the people understand they can vote themselves money, that will be the end of the Republic] – Benjamin Franklin.
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